Date: 6 May, 2000
Port of Call: Rodney Bay, St. Lucia
Subject: Martinique and St. Lucia
We went ashore yesterday to check our e-mail and found a number of gentle hints in our "In Box" along the lines of "Have you sailed off the edge of the world?" We suppose from this that it is about time for another account of our recent activities.
THE VOLCANO LOOMS
Mt. Pelee dominates northern Martinique
We finally had
a favorable forecast to leave Dominica on March 31, and by 0745 we had
the stern line untied from shore and had hauled up the anchor. Remembering
our previous attempt to sail to Martinique, we set the double-reefed mainsail
and motored south past the southern tip of Dominica. Fortunately
conditions were much more favorable this time, and the wind filled in at
about 15 to 20 knots from the east-northeast. We sailed along at
six to seven knots enjoying the great sailing and fair winds. Ahead
of us the huge cone of the Mt. Pelee volcano served as an unmistakable
landmark to the northern end of Martinique. We anchored off the town
of St. Pierre under the flanks of Mt. Pelee.
We suffered a rolly
night at anchor off the open coast of northwestern Martinique. The
next day we went ashore only long enough to check in with customs, do some
laundry, and shop for fresh vegetables at the local open-air market.
We would have liked to have spent more time here. St. Pierre is the
town that was destroyed in the 1902 eruption of Mt. Pelee, where all 30,000
inhabitants were killed, with the exception of a convict kept safe by his
prison cell. As we walked along doing our errands, we could see the
old foundations of the original city, upon which the new buildings were
rebuilt. It was a chilling reminder of the force of nature and the
impermanence of man's works. Still, we were suffering from lack of
sleep from not only the roll of the previous night, but our several days
in Dominica as well. We left right after running our errands and
motored down the coast to a small harbor outside of Fort-de-France, near
a little village called Trois Ilets (Three Islands).
On April
13, we motored the 20 miles around the southwest corner of Martinique to
the town of Marin. On the way we passed Diamond Rock, which was fortified
and commissioned as a British warship during the Napoleonic War because
its location was exactly where the British would have stationed one of
their ships. At Marin we anchored in a harbor called Baie des Cyclones
(Hurricane Bay) and found the best-protected harbor we have seen since
leaving the Chesapeake Bay six months and almost 2500 miles ago.
We would spend two weeks in this excellent harbor, enjoying the protection
and the unaccustomed pleasure of sleeping the whole night through.
On April 14, we
rented a car with two other cruisers and toured Martinique. We drove
along the eastern side of the island, where the full force of waves generated
by the trade winds batter the coast and churn the rocks into sandy beaches.
Martinique has more agriculture than any other island we have seen, and
we drove through miles of fields cultivated with bananas, pineapples, coconuts,
and sugar cane. We drove up the side of Mt. Pelee to the base of
the hiking trail and had lunch at a little restaurant looking down the
slopes of the volcano. Afterwards, we stopped and toured a rum factory.
We were able to watch the whole process from pulping and squeezing the
cane into juice, through filtering and distilling, to the aging in storage
vats. It was a self-guided tour where tourists are allowed to wander
through the work areas of the distillery. We could not imagine being
allowed that kind of access in a U.S. factory. Following the tour
we had a rum tasting in the company's store.
Driving south through
the center of the island, we stopped at a mountain stream with hiking paths
leading up the banks. We hiked into the forest, past towering mahogany
trees, each one its own ecosystem with epiphytes growing out of crooks
in the branches and moss growing up the side of the trunk.
On April 22, we were invited on another driving tour. This time
the boater we went with was a French Canadian. It brought a whole
new dimension to the trip to have someone along who spoke the language.
Early in the trip a motorcyclist coming from the opposite direction flagged
us over to the side of the road. He was the escort for a bicycle
race, and we watched and took photos as dozens of riders pedaled past.
A little further
along the road we reached the town of Robert, which coincidentally was
the name of our Canadian friend. There we were treated to the sight of
six Martinique sailing canoes getting ready to start a race. Robert (the
man, not the town) spoke in French to some other gathered spectators, and
asked when the race would start and who the favorite was. We waited
for the race to start and observed the boats. The canoes are made
of wood, brightly painted in primary colors, and are perhaps 25 feet long
and four feet wide. The stern is square rather than canoe shaped,
and the boat is steered by a simple paddle hung off the stern. The
canoes have huge rectangular sails supported from bamboo poles near the
bow, and they are manned by about a dozen men whose job is to climb out
on long poles wedged from one side of the boat and out over the gunwales.
The men perch precariously on the poles to counterbalance the force of
the huge sail. At each tack the men must shift their weight in perfect
coordination with the filling of the sails. If the crew move too
soon or too late the boat swamps, ending any chance of finishing the race.
In the first few minutes we saw three of the six canoes swamp. After
watching the race for awhile, we had lunch at a café in Robert (the
town, not the man) and then drove off for some more sight seeing.
We visited the
ruins of a castle, Chateau Dubuc, whose impressive stone ruins ran up and
down a steep hillside overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. The ruins covered
many acres, and we were awed trying to imagine what the place must have
looked like in its heyday.
After a month
in Martinique, and with the opening of a suitable weather window, we got
ready to leave on April 29. We hauled the dinghy on deck, raised
the anchor, and started motoring past the reefs that dot the harbor.
Suddenly a horrible noise started coming from the vicinity of the propeller.
We immediately shut down the engine and dropped the anchor. I donned
mask and snorkel and dove to look at the propeller. There was no
sign of anything wrong, so I climbed back aboard. About that time
I noticed that an unattended boat was drifting through the anchorage toward
one of the reefs. With our engine out of commission and the dinghy
out of the water there was nothing we could do quickly except call on the
radio and see if someone nearby could assist the other boat. Two
small dinghies came by our boat. I climbed aboard one and we zoomed
off to the boat, which by now had gone aground. Climbing on board,
we saw that the anchor line had chafed through. There was no spare
anchor, nor any spare line aboard that we could use to effect a tow.
The boat was unlocked, but we were unable to start the engine, apparently
because of dead batteries. Without many options available, we called
the port captain's office. They spoke very little English, and we
spoke even less French, but we think we conveyed to them the situation.
A little later the police boat came out, took a look at the boat and sped
off. We went back to our mysterious propeller problem, which we were
unable to recreate. We raised the anchor, motored out the channel,
and sailed off to St. Lucia.
In St. Lucia,
we anchored Sovereign off the beautiful crescent beach at Rodney Bay.
For some reason this place and time proved to magically reunite many of
the boats that were in Bermuda at the same time as we were last November
and December. The day after our arrival we had a "dinghy raft-up".
This is a party that takes place on a floating platform made by anchoring
a few dinghies and then tying all the other small boats to the first few.
Everyone brought food for sharing, and we passed plates and bowls of food
round and round the raft-up. By the end of the party we had 14 dinghies,
30 people and one dog.
A few days later
one of the boats from the raft-up arranged to have a mini-van and driver
(which normally serve as a local bus) take us for a daylong tour of the
island. We had been told that the bus drivers could be hired for
much less money than the usual tour guides, so that is what we did.
We packed 14 people plus the driver into the van and headed off.
We visited the sulfur springs at Soufriere, which bills itself as the Caribbean's
only "drive-in" volcano. The bus took us within a hundred yards of
the fumaroles and we walked the rest of the way. In the immediate
vicinity of the volcano the ground was a light gray dirt tinged with yellow
sulfur, while the slopes further up the sides of the caldera were covered
with lush green elephant grass. Brown muddy pools bubbled from the
subterranean heat, and the smell of sulfur was strong.
After a very informative
tour we all piled back into the van and went in search of a place to eat
lunch. As we looked for a place to eat, we started realizing the
difference between having a bus driver and a tour guide. The bus
driver was not familiar with the island away from his normal route, and
he had to frequently stop and ask directions. It also seemed that
he spoke only patois, and so he had trouble with English. None the
less, we found a place for lunch, ate, and loaded back into the van to
look for one of the island's waterfalls. We arrived at a spot where
lots of other buses were parked, and the driver had a rapid conversation
with someone in the road, then started driving on up the road. At
first we thought the driver was just taking us a little further on to help
us avoid some of the hike to the waterfall, but the road got steeper and
steeper, narrower and narrower. The rocks in the road became more
frequent and the pavement less so. Finally we reached a point where
the bus could go no further, and we got out and hiked up the steep hill.
We reached a point where the road crested the hill, with still no evidence
of a waterfall. There we met a young girl who told us that we had
passed the waterfall a long way back. We hiked down the hill far
enough that we felt safe to re-board the van, and drove back down to the
site where the other buses had been parked. Right there was the gate
to the waterfall. We had about 30 minutes until closing time to run
through the botanical gardens that surrounded the path to the falls, take
the obligatory photo, and dash back to the gate, which was locked behind
us. The trip turned out to be more a social event than a sightseeing
trip, because at every stop we reloaded the bus in a different order, so
that for each part of the drive we had different seatmates for company
and conversation. And we certainly couldn't complain at the price,
which totaled about $20 per person for the van, lunch, and park admission
fees.
We plan to stay
around Rodney Bay for another week or two. The St. Lucia Jazz Festival
is going on for the next week, and next weekend there will be a concert
at the north end of Rodney Bay. We hope that we will be able to hear
the music from the boat. We are enjoying just being in a place where
English is spoken and shopping at grocery stores that have foods we recognize.